


Butterflies and Second Chances

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, Season Finale, all aboard the pain train, choo choo my dudes, hedgi is Back On Her Bullshit, hinted Nora/Lia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 05:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18844249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Nora West-Allen races through the Negative Force along side her father, and knows with terrible, blood-red certainty what her future will be if she keeps running. A life ruled by bitterness and anger and always, always running away from what she loves.She can't. She can't.She won't.Nora introspective for the finale.





	Butterflies and Second Chances

“...there was a new voice  
which you slowly  
recognized as your own,  
that kept you company  
as you strode deeper and deeper  
into the world,  
determined to do  
the only thing you could do --  
determined to save  
the only life you could save.”    
~~Mary Oliver, the Journey  
  
                                                                                               Butterflies and Second Chances  
  
  
Nora always loved butterflies, colorful and bright, too fast for her to catch even if she had wanted to—but she never wanted to. They were rarer, now, her Mom had said, when she and Lia went out into the woods with Aunt Caitlin and came back with smudgy crayon drawings. Nora assumed that was like everything else. The past was brighter, for her mom. Happier. It had butterflies. It had her dad. But there were still butterflies, and summer storms, and good things. She'd run around Papa Joe's yard with her cousins (by blood or by choice, a family), tiny feet catching at the grass, until her lungs ached from laughing, empty handed.  
  
She runs, now. She runs, and runs, and she can feel the anger filling her up in laughter's place. She feels it racing—tearing--through her veins, starting at her feet and jolting upwards with each step. It's red and white and bright-hot, not like lightning but like flame. It flares up every time her feet hit whatever ground there is—pavement, grass, sidewalk, shattered glass, but doesn't fade out, burning into her bones—she wants to stop.   
  
She wants to stop, to stumble, because she can feel the red in her mouth, turning her air rotten with bile, and she can feel it in her eyes, the lightning-fire-anger like blood. She can't see her father's yellow lightning trail, or the darkness of the city around them (a city safe, and does it even know, does it even wonder, does it even care? No, they never do, they never did—that's not true—but it is! They don't mourn like she does, for her father, or for butterflies, or for _Lia--_ -no, no, she can't--). All she can see for a heartbeat that lasts too long is the flinch Cisco made when Thawne spoke to him, but it's her hand over his heart, her eyes bleeding sparks. And then, the next moment, the hurt in her mother's eyes, the emptiness around her, so much space. Alone and alone and angry.  
  
She pulls back, wrenching away, merely stopping isn't enough to be free of that feeling, the all consuming anger. She doesn't want it. She can't want it. That's no _life._ To be trapped like this forever, just anger and bitterness and red in her eyes and lungs. No. She can't. She _Won't_.   
  
All she'd wanted, from the time she was small, reading her mother's articles, reading the plaques in the museum, listening to Papa Joe's friends tell stories, was to be a hero. Well, no. That's not all, exactly. But it's an approximation. To be their hero. To be connected to something lasting, something that can't shatter apart, a legacy of love, of protection.   
  
It's not about the suit or the name, it's about what those things mean. That's what she's wanted, ever since she learned the truth. Ever since she lost Lia. Ever since she felt the Lightning inside of her. If only rage runs in her veins, pooling like bright bruises under her skin that never fades away, that dies. She'll kill it, a butterfly caught in a fist. That's not living. That's not what she wants to be.  
  
She saw the Older Grace dissolve, shattering into sharp-edged fragments. She heard her scream in rage, and bitterness, and agony. Nora doesn't want that. It scares her, terrifies her, the thought of being like that, like Eliza, her body coming apart atom by atom. But—better that than to survive twisted into a shadow of herself, all hostility and hatred, warped and lost, despising the family she loves so much. She'd never be able to stop, and love, and be loved. No.

 

Nora stops, breathing hard against the bright blue that fights back the red, edging her hands. She can feel it in her toes, in her lungs. But it doesn't hurt. It doesn't scream at her like the red fire did, this blue light. It doesn't sing to her like her lightning, just hums, foreign turning familiar. She finds the words, as her parents clutch at her, like they can hold her here, like love, and fear, and grief can be spun together and root her to this place. They want to save her, and she wants so badly to be saved, a lost little girl—but not like that.   
  
She remembers her dad's story, how he told his mom it was ok. So she wouldn't worry as her broken heart bled out. “It's okay,” she says. And it is. It is.   
  
Her mom was right. There were more butterflies here, in this time. Her dad, other family she never truly got to know, and maybe now they have a chance. Maybe Thawne is right, maybe  she couldn't ever save her father, but she has to believe there's a chance, now. For everything, for everyone, except her.   
  
She knows what home is. There was never really going to be a return to it, not with the timeline changed so deeply, and yet not enough. She knows that now. Running only helps with the consequences if you run the right direction. No do-overs. No manipulating to make things work out a different kind of worse. There are some things you can't outrun.  
  
And this is one of them.  
  
She holds tight to her family, memorizing the feeling, letting go of everything but that love, and the longing for this moment to last just one more heartbeat. And then the blue lights up around her, inside her. It does not feel like energy pulling her apart, like lightning setting her veins on fire, the tug of the Speedforce. It doesn't even feel like grief, the shattering she felt before all of this started, watching Godspeed vanish and leave her heart broken on the ground. She thinks of her family, of her home, and then of Lia. She hopes Lia is somewhere out there in the stars, waiting for her. There is none of the agony Grace must have felt. There is no fear or helplessness, no sundering. Just a moment of embrace, the voice of a ghost in her ear, and then a swarm of butterflies, lifting off her skin, off her soul, and flying into the night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> you're welcome


End file.
